y wish to incorporate in a great Slav kingdom a great many of
their kinsmen who at present are held in uneasy subjection by Austria.[9]
Nor must we forget how these same principles apply to the Teutonic States.
If the principle of nationality is to guide us, we must preserve the
German nation, even though we desire to reduce its dangerous elements to
impotence. Prussia must remain the home of all those Germans who accept
the hegemony of Berlin, but it does not follow that the southern states of
the German Empire--who have not been particularly fond of their northern
neighbours--should have to endure any longer the Prussian yoke. Lastly,
the German colonies can hardly be permitted to remain under the dominion
of the Kaiser.[10] Here are only a few of the changes which may
metamorphose the face of Europe as a direct result of enforcing the
principle of nationalities.

[9] The entrance of Turkey into the quarrel of course brings new factors
into the ultimate settlement.

[10] Cf. _Who is Responsible?_ by Cloudesley Brereton (Harrap), Chapter
IV, "The Settlement."

EUROPEAN PARTNERSHIP

But there is a further point to which Mr. Asquith referred, one which is
more important than anything else, because it represents the far-off ideal
of European peace and the peace of the world. "We have got to substitute
by a slow and gradual process," said Mr. Asquith, "instead of force,
instead of the clash of compelling ambition, instead of groupings and
alliances, a real European partnership, based on the recognition of equal
right and established and enforced by a common will." There we have the
whole crux of the situation, and, unfortunately, we are forced to add, its
main difficulty. For if we desire to summarise in a single sentence the
rock on which European negotiations from 1815 to 1829 ultimately split, it
was the union of two such contradictory things as independent
nationalities and an international committee or system of public law.
Intrinsically the two ideas are opposed, for one suggests absolute
freedom, and the other suggests control, superintendence, interference. If
the one recognises the entire independence of a nationality within its own
limits, the other seeks to enforce something of the nature of a European
police to see that every nation does its duty. It is true, of course, that
this public will of Europe must be incorporated in a kind of parliament,
to which the separate nations must send their representative